TROUBLED Dalian Atkinson was in meltdown before his taser death, convinced he was dying as football turned its back on him.
Close pals of the former Aston Villa star also told The Sun how he was wracked with money worries after efforts to “re-invent” himself as a football agent were met by “rejection by so-called friends” in the game.
Dalian died on Monday, aged 48, after police tasered him three times following a disturbance which saw him try to throttle his elderly dad before confronting officers.
Friends say he faced daily torment over his kidney and liver problems, with treatment including five-hour dialysis sessions three times a week which left the fitness fanatic feeling permanently “knackered”.
The death of his mum in 1999 also weighed heavily.
There were even rumours in his home town of Telford, Shropshire, two months ago that Dalian had died after contracting pneumonia.
A lifelong friend who went to school with the fallen star said: “He was at his lowest ebb and convinced he was dying. The whole thing was a cry for help that ended in tragedy.
“I last saw Dalian over Christmas at his dad’s house. He seemed fine and full of jokes and banter.
“He was the larger-than-life Dalian we all knew.
“He had never really been the same lad since the death of his mum Ambrozine. He doted on her and took it really badly.
“There were stories in the media that upset him down the years, like when a woman he met at a club claimed he fathered her daughter.
“Dalian had a DNA test which disproved what she was saying and he always denied the girl was his.
“But he felt embarrassed about it, more for his parents than himself.
“Word got round at the start of the year that Dalian had developed a serious kidney infection and suffered kidney failure.
“Six weeks ago rumours went round Telford that he had actually died from it. I was shocked and rushed round to see his dad who said it wasn’t true, but Dalian was not very well at all.
“Poor Dalian will have known people were saying he had died and that would have scared him stiff.
“The dialysis on the NHS was vital but they had left him a shell — as weak as a kitten.
“He was always knackered and told people he felt ‘always hindered’.
“He said it was like being in chains knowing he had to go to hospital for the sessions or he would die.
“It was obvious he had decided he could take no more.”
Dalian sought help from former Manchester United striker Andy Cole, now 44, who also suffered serious kidney problems, as he searched for an explanation for his illness.
He had been “pleading” for months with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and another of his former clubs, Sheffield Wednesday, to provide cash for private care because he did not think his illness had been properly diagnosed by the NHS.
Dalian was finally due to meet PFA officials in Manchester on Monday but died hours earlier.
However, health was only part of his misery after his dreams of becoming a football agent ended last November when he wound up his fledgling agency Players Come First.
It meant he was no longer part of the game he loved.
He tried but failed to get it off the ground for six years and felt let down by former friends who had not supported him as a football agent or through his illness.
Last night former Trinidad and Tobago international Ronnie Mauge, a good friend of Dalian, said his pal had felt snubbed.
The 47-year-old, who played for Manchester City, Charlton and Fulham, said: “We were like brothers for 20 years.
“The police didn’t have to taser Dalian — a sick man. Anyone close to him knows he would have been no threat.”
Ronnie, now a football agent based in Ipswich, was introduced to Dalian through fellow Villa and Trinidad striker Dwight Yorke at a party in Birmingham.
He said: “A lot of people made a lot of money out of him, he never made as much money as he should have done.
“He asked a lot of so-called friends in football for help but most turned their back.”
Ronnie, who usually spoke three times a week to his friend — their final conversation was last Wednesday — added: “Five or six years ago he went into being a football agent. He had enough friends and contacts in the game.
“He contacted ex-managers and people he played with, but all he got was rejection after rejection. He was banging his head.
“There were many times he put a player forward to a club but the club would just bypass him. I started to see his confidence slip away.
“He had trusted the wrong people.”
Dalian — who earned a then astronomical £3,000 a week at the start of the Premier League in 1992 — was haunted by the failure of his company.
Players Come First was set up with two other directors, from Northern Ireland and Stockport, Greater Manchester, in 2009.
In its first year it was listed as having assets of just £58 and debts of almost £52,000 as Dalian tried but failed to become a middleman for footballers changing clubs.
Fellow directors deserted him in 2013 and the company was struck off for failing to file accounts on November 3 last year.
The latest company accounts from 2013 show £2,669 in the bank against liabilities of £80,445.
Ronnie said: “Dalian became down and depressed — disillusioned as the kidney problems grew worse.
“He sought out Andy Cole who had also been through similar health worries.
“Andy had assured him that he would pull through, so that perked him up a lot.
“However, when I last spoke to him last week, he was depressed.
“The doctors could not tell him where it was going, whether he was going to get better.
“And he had high blood pressure.
“He wanted to get private health care. I believe he was struggling for money, not desperate, but appealed for help from his old clubs like Villa and Wednesday, and the PFA.
“He was starting to feel a little better until about a month ago when he caught pneumonia, then he was feeling weak again.
“Lots of things were playing on his mind.
“We would meet in Birmingham and laugh about how many millions he would make if his time had been a little later, but he wasn’t envious.
“I have met him three times this year and I felt he had lost his mojo because of the rejection by the industry that he devoted his life to, and his health.
“I did my best to pick him up. But I never feared anything bad would come from his state of mind, I thought it was a blip that we all go through.
“Football had chewed him up and spat him out.”